Any fans of "Pretty. Odd." by Panic at the Disco?

Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.

Is anyone here brave enough to admit liking this album?

I wholeheartedly believe that if it was released by another band without emo-teenpop connotations, it would be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 2000s.

It sounds absolutely nothing like their other work. I don't want to call it Beatle-esque, because that term is thrown around a whole heck of a lot, but it kind of is....
It was even recorded at Abbey Road (!)

Maybe more of a sunny Beach Boys vibe, actually...

As an entire album, it fits together incredibly well.

Brendon Urie is one hell of a vocalist.

Give it a chance.



(this youtube copy sounds awful, and the yahoo who uploaded it got the gaps wrong, but it's a sample )

Standout tracks for me include "Nine in the Afternoon," "Northern Downpour," "When the Day Met the Night," "Behind the Sea," and "That Green Gentleman."

 

I took my kids to see them last summer and they ended up turning me on to this recording. It's a really nice release and should have received much more attention than it did.

 

YES. This is one of my favorite albums, and it's about time other people recognized it's greatness. I LOVE this album (and band).
Many oldschool fans hated the album because of how different from the first it was, and many wrote it off as a "really try-hard beatlesy album"

But really.. This album is amazing from start to finish..

ALSO: If you liked this, maybe check out The Young Veins (a band formed by Ryan Ross & Jon Walker after they left Panic! after touring for pretty odd was done)

 

Sorry for the double post, but this post excites me. I love this band.. Here's one of my favorite from Pretty. Odd.

 

Cool! Thanks!

 

Last one, i'll stop now. Promise.

The Young Veins got a lot of flack for being a beatles/beach boys clone.. But I LOVE IT! The retro look and feel is great.

 

Great album, I remember buying it upon release. Listened to it many many times. I notice they only did one album in this style before reverting back to the "old" sound. I guess the fans weren't happy and it didn't sell well.

 

Yeah, the sales were poor, and so Ryan Ross (main songwriter/guitarist) & Jon Walker (bassist) left the band to form The Young Veins, who made another old sounding record. Unfortunately that album didn't do good either, so they broke up.

 

Was a huge fan of their debut, but this one slipped by me and my friend.

 

Oh wow, the Young Veins are fabulous! I've heard of them, being a Panic! fan, but never really listened much. Very nice.

 

Listen to their full album when you get time.. It's only like 28 minutes, but it's great.. They also have like 4-6 bonus tracks floating around of various covers.. Speaking of which..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FBtmH5Z3FI

 

I had mixed feelings about it...because on one hand--it fixed the issue I had with their debut--which was it sounded like it was recorded in a computer in a bedroom. Such creativity--such rank sonics. This one sounds like they went to a real studio and did less "composition by editing"....but, the material just didn't hit home. I was glad they returned to form on the next record.

If they had better advisors, they'd let them make their cut&paste creative compositions and THEN say "nice demos--take it into the studio and do it right". I feel like the way they created better hooks and suh was digitally massaging and such--as it was right back with the next record. So, fine--let them do that--but, then don't release it....take that into a studio and cut it live. Best of both worlds.

This budgetary idea that you only record material once is flawed--especially when their compositional style involves a bunch of lossy digital edits and manipulations. You used to HAVE to demo stuff for the label--then you got the budget to cut it for real. Now, the labels hear the demos and go "that's good enough--we'll crush it to DR6 and put it out like that".

 

"Fever You Can't Sweat Out" is definitely pretty damn compressed, but the tonality isn't terrible in my opinion. Vices & Virtues, on the other hand, is really crunchy in places - very audibly brickwalled.

I definitely agree with you on the recording quality of their debut, though.

 

I agree about the first album, but I still love it, regardless of recording quality. For an album recorded by a group of 17-18 year olds shortly after they had just graduated high school.. It still impresses me to this day

 

It's a fun album. Very good melodic writing-- the lyrics are total gibberish, though. Of course, you could say this of any number of actual 60s albums.

 

Some of the greatest albums ever have technically poor recording quality. It's all about the music

I love it too.

 

The lyrics can be very out there at times, but I think there's a charm to Ryan's writing..

"Behind The Sea" has some particularly nice lyrics..

"A daydream spills from my corked head
Breaks free of my wooden neck
Left a nod over sleeping waves
Like bobbing bait for bathing cod
Floating flocks of candled swans
Slowly drift across wax ponds

The men all played along
To marching drums
And boy did they have fun
Behind the sea"

Then there are songs like "She's A Handsome Woman" (I do love this song)

"Innocence
Sunk the glow and drowned in covers
Send for all your absent lovers things

Sheepish wolves
Looking lived-in, eating buttons
Wink, just don't put your teeth on me

Accidents
Let the evening in the back door
Filled the room
Ceiling to the floor

Beat backbones
Grazed the poem and made it strange
I wasn't born to be a skeleton"

Maybe it has more meaning than my brain can comprehend, but either way.. Still enjoyable

 

I own it and love it. The CD singles from this album had a lot of alternate versions of the album tracks as b-sides. All of those were pretty cool too.

 

One of my top albums. I'm a fan.

 

I saw it in a best of list and I liked the sound samples. The album itself loses steam due to repetition of themes BUT it's still a better listen than most other albums of the period, have fun.

 

I remember being pretty blown away by the album, and the band's change in sound between the first album and this one when it first came out. They went from being a Fallout Boy clone, to actually having something with some substance to it.

Pretty.Odd was also an excellent modern Power-pop album, that captured a lot of retro elements of great bands who helped found the genre. It was the first time I had really heard anybody do something like that since Jellyfish, and more recently, Pugwash. I remember throwing songs from the album on mixes I made for other people who would normally never listen to Panic! At The Disco, and they always liked them, and were often surprised to find out it was them.

The Young Viens album was great, as well. The story behind the band's split, was that guitarist Ryan Ross, who wrote the lion's share of the band's music, and bassist Jon Walker wanted to keep going in the stylistic direction of Pretty.Odd, while the band's other two members - singer Brandon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith - did not. Ross and Walker got tired of the other two band members not being able to come up with better musical ideas, so instead ventured out on their own as The Young Viens. Initially, Urie and Smith weren't supposed to keep the Panic! name, but since Ross was still making a good chunk of change in songwriting royalties from them performing the older songs he had written, he let them continue to use it.

I intially had no hopes of Vices & Virtue being any good, but it actually struck a fair balance between the styles of A Fever You Can't Sweat Out and Pretty.Odd, highlighting the better elements of both. Their last album, Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! was absolute garbage, though.

 

I loved Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die.. It's far from garbage. Maybe just not your style of music? But it's really good. Brendon set out to make a retro sounding vegas party album, and he did. I watch him live on periscope every day and he says the next album will be out in fall, and sound like a mix of frank sinatra and freddie mercury.. He's streamed himself in the studio and showed off some songs, which have classic horn samples and stuff.. Really looking forward to it

 

Just listened to this one again recently. For me, it has some killer highlights and overall it's a fine album. I know nothing of their other material though.

 

Ok, garbage was perhaps a bit too harsh, but I also wouldn't say it sounded anything like a retro Vegas party. Way too modern sounding for that. I just thought it was a big step backwards for the band, or should I say Brendon, as he's all that's left of the original group. I gave it a few listens, to be fair, but just couldn't get into it. If you like it though, that's great, and I'm glad there were people who did get enjoyment out of it. I just wasn't one of them. The next project does sounding interesting, though.

 

Yeah, and I won't argue with you concerning the band's new music vs their old music. I doubt they'll (or should I just say Brendon) will ever top the first album and Pretty Odd. But that probably has a lot to do with the fact that Brendon didn't write most of that music, it was Ryan Ross. I'm still waiting for Ryan's solo album (he has been teasing it for a while now, and even recently has posted pics of him in the studio..) In fact, here's a demo he released (he's released like 5-6 of these over the past two years or so)